DS1 Legendary Mod for DS2 Beta Thread

Checked out the gas files in DS1_Logic_Beta_9c.ds2res related to the hireable heroes and discovered there is a small error. Where mages have staffs equipped in es_shield_hand instead of es_weapon_hand. It should be noted that some of the ambient guards have weapons equipped in the shield hand. As PhoeniX noted this occurs in all the maps. I looked at Kroduk's template and it shows no es_forearms but has es_weapon_hand twice one showing #amr_glv_ftr_chain:base and the other showing #hm_1h_sh:base. I discovered in an earlier beta where one of the utraeans I do not recall who was wearing boots on their hands. The easiest fix would be what I did when I edited Cat Mansion Adepts and Legends of Utrae so the characters would have the armor and weapons I made. I left the es_weapon_hand, es_shield_hand, es_chest, es_forearms, es_feet blank as in es_weapon_hand; and put the weapons and armor in the [other] field of the inventory. makes changes easier when editing.

I find it kind of cool that DS2 does not get upset about weapons where shields go, shields where weapons go and so on. If this holds true for all clothing types I might make a weapon pack that has items like "these boot are made for slapping" "shirt off my back" "Iryan's Shield Axe" and so on.

As for the battle music I,ll have to put it down as a failed experiment. DS2 system of handling moods and triggers is just too flaky. Flick is a lot more reliable but doesn't support moods for the entire party. Now if DS2 was a single character game like Diablo then it would work perfectly.

I,ll post another version of Ehb with the music dropped. Thanks for testing. It was worth the attempt but I just lack the knowledge to program it properly. Incidentally I even experimented with trying to get the battle music working through mood_manager.skrit, the main theme stopped and started correctly but the battle track wouldn't play.

Edit: I still think battle tracks are possible if implemented through flick but SetMood (found in fc_actor.skrit) only sets the mood for a catalyst, not the entire party. According to the documentation CameraMood can be made to set a mood for the entire party using the reserved "Party" role but that will just cause an error if used outside of a NIS.

Anyhow here's the code for SetMood, I did try making it set a mood for the whole party without success.
bool ActorSetMood$(flickcontext ctx$)
{
Goid thisGoid$ = ctx$.GetThisRoleGoid();

// Check this goid
if( !thisGoid$.Go.IsAnyHumanPartyMember() )
{
report.errorf("CONTENT ERROR: Flick[%s] is trying to SetMood[%s] on role[%s] template[%s] when the role is not a human party member!!\n",
ctx$.GetSequenceName(), ctx$.GetString("inMood"), ctx$.GetThisRoleName(), thisGoid$.Go.TemplateName );
return false;
}

// Use flick util function for setting the mood so it gets rpced across the network.
Flick.SSetRoleMood( thisGoid$, ctx$.GetString("inMood") );

return(false); // we are done
}

I like the battle tracks and consider the "failed experiment" as more of a minor annoyance. I plan to leave it installed as long as permissible.

Besides I haven't given up all hope which is why I posted the code for Set_Mood function used in flick. There must be some way of making the mood global for all party members as per cmd_mood_on_event. It's just beyond my small understanding of how flick works.

It's just strange that flick always work but commands don't always, even if they're linked to the exact same trigger. The more actions you have on the trigger the more likely it is that one or more of them will fail. I think that's why GPG went over to using flick for as much of the scripting as they could.

So I'm praying that someone like maybe KillerGremal may be able to work some magic on Set_Mood or something similar. If they could the battle tracks could be even be extended further to the tougher regular set battles like you get in Wesrin Cross. Another option is modifying mood_manager.skrit to enable battle tracks in existing moods, which would avoid having triggers or flicks altogether. As I mentioned I fiddled with this and was able to stop and then restart the regular mood upon battle but couldn't get the battle track to play. Still some sort of limitator on the number of enemies engagaed would have to be employed as otherwise it would play even for battles with 1 or 2 monsters, which is unrealistic. This is probably why GPG never went ahead with the system.

If we could get battle tracks working, then it would even possible for sound mods to be made to turn the battle tracks into something from say Final Fantasy or anything else.

Thanks for the support and feedback, I appreciate it.

Found I still had the old level adjust "moods" enabled rather than the new table schema level adjust.

Will be starting a new game and see if that had anything to do with battle track mood problems.

As soon as you have this we can seen on how cmd_mood_on_event or flick can tune the things a bit.

 
An improved mood manager would be the best for sure, unfortunately the skrit functions as used for the standard+ambient track do not exist for the battle track (although battle tracks are still mentioned in the mood files).
Moreover there are only functions to start the standard/ambient track, but no functions to get the name of the standard/ambient track - like this is no way for a tweak to insert the battle track (specified as snow flake texture or what ever) as current standard track.

Perhaps it's possible to set a different/battle mood from inside the mood manager itself, I fear however this could cause a loop (a loop of permanent mood requests, when a mood trigger states that mood manager didn't apply the mood the mood manager actually has called for).

A good configurable and realizable concept is missing too when and when not to play the battle track.
It's easy to say 'play the battle when the player is fighting with a boss' (and indeed it's easy to state this for one moment/frame), but it would need something with a 'temporal control' that is able to decide that the player generally is (still) fighting against a boss (and hence keep the battle track) although the player is currently running a way (just) to cast a buff temporarily or to pick up a nearby potion for example.
It could be quite painful to expand the existing mood manager in this manner...

It's some time since i have checked the mood manager the last time, I could examine it once again, right now however there are several 'adversities'.

KillerGremal: Thanks for the tips but I did try using mood triggers and found that if conditions existed for cmd_mood_on_event to fail then the mood trigger would fail too. For example for the Fury boss encounter I set up a trigger that covered the relatively small area that the battle took place. It still failed to trigger the normal mood when the Fury died. So I went back to using cmd_mood_on_event and placed it in a very obscure position and this time it worked. Bizarre.

It's also disturbing that some events that worked for me didn't for PhoeniX in the testing he's done. Which indicates a random problem which makesa developing the system difficult.

I agree that modifying mood_manager would be difficult and probably not the best solution.

Which is why I keep thinking that flicks the answer, especially SetMood function which I know works. However it only works for the catalyst, ie. whichever party member triggers it. The rest of the party hears nothing. Using CatalystPrimaryHero would guarantee no inconsistencies but limit the mood just to the hero character. If there were some way of making SetMood set a global mood for the entire party then that would be the best answer.

I did get the party role working for SetMood but it doesn't set the mood for the entire party despite what the internal documentation says. I also checked out Playsound and PlaysoundatTarget functions but it seems they only work for NIS sequences (and that's the only places you find them in the DS2 or BW flicks as well).

Have gotten my new party to Glacern and all battle tracks have worked this time. Will keep you posted as I progress.

I must have missed the tracks the first run through Glitterdelve Mines. I think they were there but drowned out by other sounds. I adjusted audio to let me hear music better this time around.

Got to Arctic Caverns and the same bosses are affected. And in previous run through the Lost Witch in Dark Swamp also battle track did not stop. The common factor seems to be there are monster generators enabling at the same time that bosses are engaged.

Some of the tracks are better quality than others and could indeed be drowned out by normal battle sounds. I'd be interested in hearing what are your favourite tracks and what ones you think fit best.

Conflicts in triggers could possibly occur as there must be a limited buffer in which to store the requests. Perhaps if the miniboss encounters were staged in an area devoid of any other triggers that may help. Certainly some of the encounters would benefit through this, two that come to mind are the Krug Scavenger Boss in Edgaar's cellar (where the battle track starts down the elevator and then suddenly cuts off) and the Krug Shaman Boss on top of the tower on the way to Stonebridge (the mood trigger at the top of the tower prevents the battle track starting plus the boss intro text plays even before he comes into sight).

However two areas where I had trouble (the Fury Boss in the Fury Den and the Shadow Lunger in the Subterranean river) had no generators or conflicting triggers in the area of the encounter.

Completed Ehb and only encountered 4 tracks that were buggy. The first 3 have been stated and the last one was in the Goblin Warrens. This was the Heater Boss in gi_r3.

And as for the tracks themselves, the ones I liked the best were;

Come to Life Near the Gallows
Stalking the Enemy

The only one I did not particularly care for was;

Sir Round Battle

Thank you for the report. Was better than I expected. Cmd_mod_on_event seems more robust than we expected and I'm sure I can get those 4 working.

I've been fiddling around with a couple of minor additions as well as the battle tracks. These are more location names and secret found messages. I'll limit the battle tracks to the ones you suggested (later on players could easily add their own). So there'll be another update to the map in due course (as well as probably adding these features to the other 3 official DS1 maps).

In the meantime I've been experimenting with adding monster_level_adjust support to the official DS2 campaign map as well as Broken World. It's more than just adding the tweak to the map as the recruitable characters and bosses (plus a couple of special monsters) need to be tweaked as well as otherwise their stats remain static. The hardest part is adding scaling damage to the spells the monsters use or they'll remain a set damage levels making the bosses and special monsters easier than regular monsters.

Why add monster_level_support to the official DS2 maps? So that players can play the DS1 maps and DS2 maps and reach close to level 100 without having to continually replay the same maps over and over again.

As soon as I'm confident the mod is playable I'll release an alpha version for anyone interested.

Of late I have not had much time to play do to some issues in real life, but I agree with PhoeniX about the music. Iryan when you get a version of the DS2 and broken world maps with the monster adjust I would for sure like to see it. Actually I look forward to any updates.

I posted the Alpha of the DS2BW Monster Level Adjsut Mod support at this thread as it seems more appropriate;
http://siegetheday.org/?q=node/1330#comment-20710

But here's a direct link to the file as well; http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/DS2BW_Monster_Level_Adjust_Support.zip

Just an update of what's happening with the mod.

I'm currently working on enabling sets based on the more noteable ds1 items in the maps. These will be at set positions like in Legends of Aranna and Legends of Utrea, ie. chests or boss drops. I've worked out a method of spawning an item based on the party's level in flick so that the items will always be around your party level (maybe not the most efficient but it seems to work). So players will need to search the maps if they want all the sets, unlike in DS2 where sets are random drops.

This is the first item I've converted myself, the bloody helm from ds1 (why is it called bloody helm I wonder?) that is suppose to go with the new Blood Armor Set. You can also see the Lord Hovart Blood Armor that PhoeniX has converted and the hero is wearing Cat Mansion versions of the Black Widow Set. Currently the Cat Mansion character can't wear the armor (nor can the Utraean race) but can wear everything else.

There's about 280 ds1 items that are planned to be converted to use in sets or unique items and about 70% have been completed. The body armor is the real pain due to how it's implemented in DS1. There's about 9 of those to do (Serpentine scale, crystal plate, solar chain, rock pelt, olaf's studded leather, bone plate, imperial plate and night garment). If anyone can help with these it would be appreciated.

Plus I'm planning of having party banters for characters recruited in each map (ie Ulore in Kingdom of Ehb) and the battle tracks implementations have been refined by KillerGremal so that they should now work a lot better.

I have had them done for some time and forgot to send them to you.

I've been busy converting more DS1 items into DS2. Here's some retextures of DS1 armor (as you can't use the armor models directly in DS2 like you can weapons).

Altan's leather

Serpentine Scale

Serpentine Helm

Spirited Helm

It's a pity the armor models can't be used directly in DS2 as DS1 had an incredible amount of variety compared to it's sequel. Still in the next version of the Mod there'll be over 180 DS1 items, including 136 weapons and 23 shields which are DS1 models converted for use in DS2. These will be found as unique, quest or set pieces, so to avoid flooding the shops with them.

Progress has been slow but steady for the last few weeks. All of the set items I want to use in DS2 have been converted and now it's the painstaking progress of making the thousand or so templates required for them to work in DS2 and also level up automatically to the player's level. Since I want these available as rewards or placed items, this was the only way I can do this. Think of Legends of Aranna or Legends of Utrea in DS1 rather than the way DS2 handles sets.

Here's some of the sets converted for use in DS2. The weapons are direct ports of the original models but the armors, gloves and boots are retextures of DS2 models as the DS2 character models have different bone structures and so don't support the DS1 models (ie. a DS1 helm would appear like the character was holding his or her head in their arms, not nice);

Olaf's Barbarian Set consisting of 4 pieces (armor, hem, boots and ring)

Rock Pelt Set consisting of 5 pieces (armor, helm, shield, ring and club)

Woodland Set consisting of 4 pieces (armor, gloves, boots and bow).

Serpentine Set consisting of 5 pieces (armor, helm, gloves, boots and sword).

Hovart's Blood Set consisting of 5 pieces (Armor, Helm, Boots, Sword and Ring).

Black Widow Set consisting of 5 pieces (armor, gloves, boots, helm and mace).

Merik's Set consisting of 5 pieces (armor, gloves, boots, ring and staff). You can also see that the sets support the Cat Mansion Girl Mod natively and also the Utraean Race.

Molten Set consisting of 5 pieces (armor, helm, gloves, boots and axe).

Water Set consisting of 4 pieces (armor, helm, ring and mace held and used like a cestus).

There'll also be some unique items, mostly weapons but a couple of armors like this Noble Vesture.

Thanks to Phoenix for the work he did on Hovart's Blood Armor, the Black Widow Set and Merik's starlight vesture. He also supplied the pieces for the Molten Set which can be also downloaded here at Siegetheday as a separate mod. Thanks to him I was able to use the animated armor technique for the Aqua Robe for the water set above. I hope he gets his affairs sorted soon so he can get back to modding. Will miss him in the meantime. Thanks heaps for your wonderful help.

The DS1 armor looks really nice, great job to all.

That's looking really good iryan!

This seem to rock, to bad the installation seems so daunting. At some point I need to take a bite at it thou. To bad I am on Steam now, complicating things further, sometimes stuff are in another place then whar regular intalls would give.

Still a bit dauting but I will take a bite at it when I got time to focus at it. Once I got up an running in my new apartment I will probably take a crack at it. And nowadays I finally got a modern rig, unlike before I always used a two generations old one. Playing everything on lowest possible settings and still sometimes playing in "slideshow mode" does not encurage to much experimentation.

Tinkering further I've now made up templates for 94 of the good olde DS1 spells.

Such as inferno, pestilence, acid gas and summon molten golem for combat mages

And lightning bolt, freak, nova strike and summon rock beast for nature mages

Some spells like freak are based on other's work such as the Fear and Inferno spells by Darkelf while most are either renameed tweaks of existing DS2 spells or new spells that use power enchantments for the special effects. Nature Mages can now use lightning based spells as in DS1 and some DS1 buff spells like Anchored Shot are now combat magic instead of nature magic as it makes more sense with the Blood Assassin class.

Like the unique and set weapons and armor, these will all be unique spells that are given as rewards or found as loot from minibosses or in secret locations, etc. Unless I decide to have a special secret merchant in any of the maps they won't be found in shops or as loot from normal monsters.

Unfortunately some of the iconic spells from DS1 are too hard to duplicate even remotely in DS2, at least for me. So you won't find spells like Explosive Powder, Fireskull, Fire Wall, Firerain, Flame Blades or Meteor for Combat mages or Light Ray, Frigid Armor, Sun ray, Ice Storm or Killing Fist for Nature Mages.

And Hot, I like the spells Iryan.

I always was a passionate mage player in DS1, in particular since LoA (because of additional content and the improved hotkey support). Thus I would appreciate to see more spells in DS2 too well...

...unfortunately, as experienced myself, they are quite affordable to create for DS2.
There is no documentation about it and people would be shocked how many parameters already a small effect code can have. To synchronize the effect finally with the functionality of the spell - this may be another problem, not sure if the existing spell components are flexible enough...

So concerning the work that is needed it's great to see the first DS1 spells here!

Still I hope that nobody is expecting the introduced DS1 spells to be any like the originals except for spell icons. In most cases I,ve just renamed similar DS2 spells and in some cases even that wasn't,t necessary like Fireball or fire spray. Thanks to modders like Darkelf there are some revamped spells like Freak and I,ve just used some existing spell components to make some of the spells as well like Acid Gas and Acid Cloud.

The idea is to bring back some memories when players find one of these revamped DS1 spells and maybe inspire some modders to try to create more complex spell components that could be used for some of the more exotic DS1 spells like Meteor and Firerain, etc.

http://www.mediafire.com/?jakh6c95wj7cx9t
- here are some more spells i have played around with. i havent touched this mod since 2010 so not sure what's in it now.

As approach to create a Fire rain, you could just start with a 'Firedrop' - as a Firebolt travelling now vertically instead of horizontally (simply with a new caster-point above target).
Then try to add a looping timer to create additional Firedrops, and check if damage will accounted multiple times too (this could be a problem).
However should this be ok, add random ground offsets and tune the firebolt effect to look smaller or more drop-like.

Meteor could be a combination of the 'Ripple' spell (damage/shacking), any explosion, and a coming-down effect (a larger firedrop, or the 'light ball' from Aeather Blast).
Note maybe, there are some unused effect emitter templates (emt_...), perhaps it's possible to copy the explosion from there without much changes.

There's some great effects there Darkelf!

These four could be freeze, fire rain, acid gas and iceshard. All of the spells work except for blizzard for some reason.